re: CBO: Obamacare will have lower premiums, insure more, and cost government less

The demographic's of the US are against this. We have an aging populace and the US birth rates are extremely low.

Many now are living well into their 80s and 90s. The number of centurions in the US is at all time highs. People are living in their 'retirement' years longer than their 'work' years.

These people are going to have be housed, fed and taken care, by....the taxpayer. And as the federal government grows bigger and bigger and the tax-base grows smaller and smaller, the deficits get larger and larger.

The young folks that we were told that needed to enroll into obama-scam to make it work are not there. And it never be there. Most young healthy people are going to blow off insurance and tell the IRS to 'come catch me if you can.'

Yeah, the IRS will get garnish their little tax refunds but they will just adjust their withholdings to counter that.

The next 10-20 years are going to be a huge bust if something positive doesn't happen.

I am not too optimistic about the future of our country right now.

The only way I see out of this demographic tsunami is to have an huge long sustained economic boom much like the US had post-WWII.

I don't see that happening anytime soon.

What may happen? Anothe huge large scale war with many nations fighting against each other.

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You have no freaking idea what you are talking about and you have no clue how insurance works.

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Like many, he appears to have insurance confused with redistribution.

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Here is an article from today's Politico that pretty much cements my comments.

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Those comments run counter to very recent comments made by many of the same parties.
Again, the proof will be in consumer pocketbooks and in the voting booth.

As the employer mandate hits, rumor has it that prices are set to escalate. At the same time, up to 40 million additional consumers will be tossed into the Exchanges like last week's detritus. We'll see then how "cemented" your comments are.

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and utterly lacks data backing up the claims.

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was just about to post this

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Indeed, we will see...give it some time.

But, as I said in an earlier post, big businesses are embracing the ACA and want it to succeed.

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Factually wrong! Again!

The businesses wanting Obamacare to succeed are generally those wanting to drop healthcare coverage for their employees. Period.

. . . . and when THOSE BUSINESSES succeed, here's what's coming:

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How Obamacare Leaves People Without Doctors
by Kathleen Miles
04/10/2014

LOS ANGELES - In January, a doctor told Noam Friedlander, who was suffering from excruciating lower back pain, that she needed surgery to remove part of a severely herniated disc. Friedlander had Blue Shield insurance through Covered California, California's version of Obamacare, and planned to use it to cover the costs of the operation.

But when she started to call surgeons covered by Blue Shield, she ran into a roadblock. Surgeons who were covered by her insurance operated out of hospitals no longer covered by her insurance -- or vice versa. Friedlander spent days on the phone, hours on hold, making dozens of calls across Southern California, trying to match a surgeon with a hospital that would both be covered. In total, she reached out to 20 surgeons and five hospitals.

"No one could help me. Some expressed sympathy," Friedlander, 40, told The Huffington Post in an email. "They told me, 'I'm so sorry -- it's all just so new. You're a victim of the changes. No one knows what they're doing.'"

Unable to match a hospital and a surgeon that were both covered, Friedlander started haggling between doctors for a cash price for the surgery. She chose a surgeon who wasn't covered by her insurance but who operated in a hospital that was covered. She expects her insurance to pay the hospital bill, but she had to pay for her surgeon's bill herself. In the end, she had to take out two credit cards so she could pay $16,000 out of pocket.

LINK

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BOHICA baby! The "Exchanges" await!

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what happens to the demand curve for health services when more people receive health benefits? what happens to the price level of the service in that case?

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More to the point, what happens to consumer pricing when preexisting economies of scale are strapped with increasing costs?

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My statement was that the costs (premiums) in the future will go down for the ACA pools

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a premium is a price, not a cost. that is a certainly not crippling for your argument, but since you've been lecturing about "college Econ", "the laws of supply and demand", and "the simple physics of economics", you need to get that shite right.

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this is because the first people into the pools are the most unhealthy and as more healthy people get in the cost (premiums) will go down.

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this is not ever necessarily true, and you (we) have no idea whether it is or will be the case in any or all of the exchanges.

and it is also definitely NOT what you said earlier- your argument was one of economy of scale, which only takes into account size of the pool, not the distribution of risk therein. you cannot assume that the increase in size of the pool will be driven by the healthy more than by the unhealthy.

and here's another thing about those newly-covered healthy people you might have picked up on in your econ classes: being covered will actually provide some incentive for them to relax on their healthy-ness. and it will do so for the newly-covered unhealthy as well.

regardless of that, what happens to the medicaid pools? what happens to the employer-provided pools with the employer mandate now in effect? what happens to utilization rates in all of them? how do the new definitions of "essential benefits" affect all of that?

how can you say that it is clear from the laws of supply and demand that premiums will decrease?

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There are a lot of single payer type systems in industrialized countries around the rest of the world that would belie the conclusions you have reached. Survey after survey has shown that the overall yearly costs of those programs are much less than what is spent here, now, in the US

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you have been commenting on the obamacare exchanges, which are not anything like single-payer systems. of what relevance is any part of this comment?

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I believe that you are not taking a look at the entire picture here. There are a lot of single payer type systems in industrialized countries around the rest of the world that would belie the conclusions you have reached. Survey after survey has shown that the overall yearly costs of those programs are much less than what is spent here, now, in the US.

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Good God Almighty!
Medicare is single payer.
What are the costs associated with that program?

It is almost as if there are extra costs associated with the American system.
I wonder what those could be?

Wanna talk physics of economics and supply/demand?

Do you understand that the premiums in ACA this year were pre-set before they saw what the makeup of the pool would be? Do you understand that their prices were set based on projected pool demographics that were significantly better than what actually occurred?

I don't think you are really seeing the full picture with your supply/demand point. You are saying that the more people sign up, the less it costs? No! Because insurance companies can supply an infinite number of insurance policies. There is no limit, if you have the money...they will give it to you.

What IS limited? Doctors...General physicians to be exact. There was a shortage of nearly a quarter million general physicians back in 2008 when all this ACA crap was being discussed.

It has only gotten worse since that time as this very bill has caused many health care providers to re-evaluate their business model in favor of not doing work for certain insurance plans. While at the same time NOTHING has been done to decrease the barriers of entry of the profession. The reason the shortage is so pronounced in the general physician demographic, is because MED students often choose to enter into specialty medicine in order to be capable of paying off half a million in student loans quicker.

The physicians are the ones actually providing the goods. So what happens when MORE people want to use their nice pretty new insurance to see their physician because of an infection?

In 2006 Massachusetts enacted Romney care, which is essentially the model for ACA. Lets see what the Massachusetts Medical Society had to say in their ninth annual Patient Access to Care study.

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Primary Care Trend Data: Medical Society officials say the trend data for access to primary care shows cause for concern in all three primary care specialties. While the numbers have fluctuated from year to year, the percentage of family physicians accepting new patients has dropped 19% over the last seven years; the percentage of internists accepting new patients has plunged 21% over the last nine years; and the percentage of pediatricians accepting new patients has fallen 10% over the last four years.

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Wide Variations Among Counties: Wide variations exist in average wait times from county to county. For family medicine, Suffolk County has the shortest average time at 16 days, and Franklin County has the longest average wait time at 106 days.

For internal medicine, average wait times run from 26 days in Worcester County and 28 days in Barnstable County, to 128 days in Bristol County, 63 days in Essex County, and 55 days in Norfolk County.

Wait times for new pediatric patients ranged from 13 days in Bristol County and 16 days in Plymouth County to 38 Days in Suffolk County and 44 days in Berkshire County.

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Mass. Medical Society Article

So what does the average individual do when he/she has a simple infection, but they have to wait maybe a month? They seek more immediate care (i.e. the ER). Costs for ER visits are astronomical compared to the costs for someone to see their general physician. So the market will essentially be driving those to less effective routes.






And here is a link from CNN that pretty much cements my comments.

Doctor Shortage, Increased Demand Could Crash Health Care System





IDGAF about the liberal vs conservative arguments on ACA. Its a cluster f* that was not put together with logic. There were no studies done on any pre-existing health care systems to determine what was best for the overall health care market. It was put together by a bunch of overpaid lawyers based on what Insurance companies would stomach.

A link pretty much cementing my comments...

Princeton study find US is an oligarchy